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Mysterious disappearances are occurring one after the other in Tatsumi Town. Kiriya has a vision from a mysterious beautiful girl with pointy ears. A book talking for an alternative world is found. And Mao searching for her long lost friend, Zero, comes to our world. But what she didn’t expect is to find Souma and Kureha, and even less, to accidentally take them to her world. Now, Souma and Kureha have to find a way to come back. But other forces are playing their part in the darkness and Souma with Kureha will find that going back is harder than they first anticipated.

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I know most initial reactions to this was rather negative because of all the RPGs they could do they just had to choose this one. Albeit I don't actually hate Shining Tears that much. Mostly cause of Dark Xion and Neige. If we had some nicely animated fighting/war scenes it could work out, even if the plot is rather predictable and cliche.

Xion looks cool in the above picture. And Neige. *_* Now if only cool pictures would equal good anime.

Never played the game, but I am still willing to watch a few episodes.

Yeah, whatever you do don't play the game. Just stick with the anime version if you are curious. Odds are very good it will be superior and you really don't need to play the game to enjoy this. I don't have much info on whether the X signifies a sequel or an adapation, but it's looking like the latter. Even still the game is not worth your time unless you have a lot of time on your hands and a lot of patience for load screens, boring repetitive combat reminiscent of early Dynasty Warriors games and insepid dialogue. I somehow get the feeling that Sega botched the translation once again and the dialogue may not be as bad as it appears in the English game. That's one of the reasons why I am extremely curious about the anime.

The game made me ill, mainly because the character development had so much potential but they dropped the ball and the horrid gameplay couldn't save it. So considering an anime has no "gameplay" I think it may do just fine. Surely with some good writing they can make the girls strong enough to pull people into the show.

Though it's only a 6.5-7 out of 10 for me, I actually enjoyed the game. The gameplay was decent, customizing your characters, skills and equipment wise like FF XII is actually a plus. The horrid thing about it was actually the loading time where you wish you could bomb the shit out of SEGA. It's not really surprising when people gave around 2-5 score out of 10, but I enjoyed the liberty of customization.

As for the anime, anyone has infos on how many episodes they plan to make?I wonder which ending will the anime take. (Here's hoping an ending with Niege ).

Personally, I believe that while it may incorporate the story elements of the game, I highly doubt it's going to be a faithful adaption.

Well, it's going to be directed by Hiroshi Watanabe of Slayers, Star Ocean EX, and Orphen fame, so I doubt it's going to be anything that bad. While it would be personally preferable to me if it could go for an Orphen, with a solid mixture of rich character development, interaction and drama, the other 2 wouldn't be that bad either. EX captured the spirit of Star Ocean 2 rather well, even if the 2nd half was continued in drama CDs instead and a fun show akin to Slayers wouldn't be bad either.

Masaki Hiro on the other hand... His track record isn't that impressive. He's been involved in the writings of several decent series like Kukkinikuman II, Gash Bell and Sonic X...all of which weren't that great either, but this looks like the first time he's the one in charge solely. We'll see where it goes.

True, the source material isn't the greatest, but so long they're not pulling a Ragnarok Online, I'd think liberties with execution can only be a better thing. How much better...well, that depends.

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Night~and~Gale: ~ The Final Mythology of the Man who Defied Destiny.The sleeping lion shall awaken beyond the depths of time, crossing ten billion lights, come to Terra.

Though it's only a 6.5-7 out of 10 for me, I actually enjoyed the game. The gameplay was decent, customizing your characters, skills and equipment wise like FF XII is actually a plus. The horrid thing about it was actually the loading time where you wish you could bomb the shit out of SEGA. It's not really surprising when people gave around 2-5 score out of 10, but I enjoyed the liberty of customization.

As for the anime, anyone has infos on how many episodes they plan to make?I wonder which ending will the anime take. (Here's hoping an ending with Niege ).

I'll join you in bombing the shit out of this once great company. Nothing but complete crap from them in the last 5 years since the Dreamcast died in America. Apparentely even when they got rid of the players abililty to control Sonics horizontal movement in the Wii game they still somehow botched the controls and the music sounds like a bad Linkin Park CD. My god they've practically joined the ranks of Titus, Stellar Stone, Acclaim and THQ. I have this thing called the Black Trinary of prolific gamemakers which contained Acclaim, Activision and THQ and then Acclaim went off and EA took its place, but now EA has been pulled off and replaced by SEGA. I almost guarantee you SEGA thought "Well okay our game sucks in everything but art, but they'll forgive us if we get Tony Taka to draw some really attractive girls and have them in the game".

@ Nightengale I've said it once and I'll say it again, the anime is already better by default if SEGA isn't allowed to touch it. Pray that it isn't a faithful adaptation, but told properly. We'll probably get far more story and character out of it as an anime. And I will support a motion to approve TrueKnights theory that without gameplay it is also better by default. Grumble Grumble.........

It has a very good cast though, the 2 main characters are played by Souchiro Hoshi and Akira Ishida ... **cough**Kira and Athrun again?
hope it doesn't turn into a disappointment, it does look a bit like Record of Lodoss War though

Hmmm.... I'll be looking forward to this. Ever since I watched the intro a few years ago which was pretty sexy, I had something like an attachment to it. I also like the character designs. Well I hope the anime will do good, considering the game didn't really have such a great reputation.

I'll join you in bombing the shit out of this once great company. Nothing but complete crap from them in the last 5 years since the Dreamcast died in America.

The problem with the Shining series in its current incarnation is the noticable lack of Camelot at the reigns of the series' development. Rewind back to the days of the Saturn, where the Shining series was still in the safe hands of Camelot: both Shining Force III and Shining The Holy Ark were (and still are!) two of the most prominent titles in the series. Then, for reasons put down to contrasting interests, Sega's deal with Camelot came to an abrupt end and Shining fans were left with Sega's poor in-house development attempts at the series (more specifically, Shining Soul).

I personally enjoyed Shining Tears once I began to look past the horrendous loading times, somehow. Perhaps its aesthetics (delivered by Tony) soothed my pains. orz

I'm looking forward to see how Shining Wind turns out, but like others have similarly commented, my faith in Sega to deliver something as superb as what Camelot was capable of continues to wane considerably. Don't even get me started on Sonic Team...

Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to see Watanabe's take on Shining Tears.

Yeah, Shining Tears had gorgeous art that got me to look past some of it's gameplay flaws so I hope the anime will have good animation so I can actually enjoy the storyline without the decent but at times tedious gameplay.

I seriously miss the Shining strategy rpgs, they were some of my favorite games (even the Sega CD one) and should be giving the Fire Emblem series a serious run for it's money. It still bugs me when Sega says "Strategy RPGs don't really take advantage of the newer systems so we're moving to strategy action instead" in the past when asked about a new Strategy installment now that the Neo line has gone even further away from the series roots.

Yeah, Shining Tears had gorgeous art that got me to look past some of it's gameplay flaws so I hope the anime will have good animation so I can actually enjoy the storyline without the decent but at times tedious gameplay.

I seriously miss the Shining strategy rpgs, they were some of my favorite games (even the Sega CD one) and should be giving the Fire Emblem series a serious run for it's money. It still bugs me when Sega says "Strategy RPGs don't really take advantage of the newer systems so we're moving to strategy action instead" in the past when asked about a new Strategy installment now that the Neo line has gone even further away from the series roots.

Anything Sega says about the industry should be subject to the utmost scrutiny since they can barely comprehend how to make a game anymore, let alone what people want in a game (Decent Music for one would be nice after witnessing the emo-rock soundtrack of Sonic and The Secret Rings). I think they are caught on the idea that people want their games to be as mature, edgy and realistic as possible if nothing else. My advice is to leave them to die a quiet death.